Sunday and May Day: A man who spent part of the winter up in the Kapuskasing district told me that the best-dressed people in Canada live there. They haven"t much to spend their money on beside personal adornment, and they go in for rich and colourful raiment of a kind never seen in the city. Manufacturers prepare special lines of Babylonian parkas and Tyrian wind-breakers for the northland which are unknown in the cities of Ontario, where men dress in gray and blue sacking and allow their wives to choose their ties for them. In the north, this man told me, the trappers and loggers are great patrons of the beauty shops, and like to have their hair and beards arranged in crinkly marcels. I was not surprised to hear this, for man in a natural state is a vainglorious creature; it is only when he puts on the shackles of civilization that he becomes colourless, shamefaced, and slinking. . . May Day today, which I celebrated by organizing a dance round the May Pole for some children, after which I treated them to chunks of May Pole sugar, which is scarce this season.
Monday: Today at lunchtime I saw a girl"s hat blow off into the street; she was a pretty girl (well -- fairly pretty -- not fat, anyhow), nicely dressed, and her distress was pitiable to see. The hat was a small round gray felt gourd, and after rolling about in the dirt for a while, it came to rest under a parked car. With the alertness of an old campaigner in the s.e.x War, I at once took cover in a shop door, for I knew that that girl would immediately be on the lookout for a man to get her hat for her, and I had no mind to crawl on my ulcers in the street, under somebody else"s oily old jalopy. Sure enough, she had her victim within three minutes; simpering pathetically he fished out the hat, and his reward was a smile -- not nearly enough in these days. . . But at five o"clock I saw a young workman lose his cap in the street, and what happened? His companions jeered coa.r.s.ely, young women sn.i.g.g.e.red and sharpened their fingers at him, and a big fat capitalist in a blue car rode right over his hat just as he was s.n.a.t.c.hing for it. This typical display of the inequalities under which men struggle in the modern world saddened me so much that I hardly had strength to resist a young Jehovah"s Witness who tried to sell me a magazine on my way home.
Tuesday: My cold is not better; it is worse, and I am confronted by one of those vexing problems for which there is no wholly satisfactory solution. Shall I stay at home, and enjoy the delights of mild invalidism, or shall I do my day"s work, and enjoy the gloomy pleasures of martyrdom?. . . To lie in bed, cosseted with hot-water bags and flannel chest-warmers, supping gruel, syllabubs, and tansy tea -- that is the ideal state on a vile, rainy, soggy day like this. But again, to snuffle at my work, to throw paper handkerchiefs into the waste basket in monotonous rhythm, to cough pitifully and roll my rheumy eyes toward Heaven whenever anyone reproaches me -- this, too, is bliss. . . Then again a man with a cold is a privileged snarler; he can be as abrupt as he likes with his colleagues, and they are forced to believe that it is his illness which speaks through his lips, and not his habitual sweet spirit. Lying in bed, there is no one to snarl at, for if one snarls at one"s nurse she may retaliate with a mustard plaster -- which is, of course, for one"s own good, and has nothing whatever to do with revenge. . . I eventually decided in favour of work, and developed a cough which sounds like coal pouring down a chute.
Wednesday: I watch the TV a good deal these days, for I am enchanted by the wonders of the newscasts, though occasionally I shed a tear for the ignorance of the announcers. Today I heard Connecticut with the second "c" sounded -- an inexcusable solecism, and yesterday I heard Count Bernadotte called "Bernadotty." I am often told that TV announcers cannot be faultless; I know that, but I insist that they should speak like educated people, and not like members of the backward squad at the Frontier College. After all, they are paid to talk, and if they cannot speak well they are bad workmen, and deserve criticism like other bad workmen. If man has conquered the air merely to fill it with bombs and illiteracy, we might as well discount this civilization, and try a new one.
Thursday: Word reached me today that I am shortly to possess a handsome kitten; I have been on the track of a kitten of just the right sort for quite a time. Immediately turned my attention to suitable names. Nicholas is a fine name for a cat, and so is Solomon. Dr. Johnson called his cat Hodge, which convinces me that it must have been a rustic, b.u.mpkin cat, with a miaow like a creaking door. All sorts of famous men have been cat-lovers, but unfortunately they have not left a record of their cats" names. They may not have had names. I should like to call my cat Bubastis, after the Cat G.o.ddess of ancient Egypt, but my neighbours are very conservative, and would give me oblique glances if I crept about my garden calling "Bubastis, Bubastis" in a high, soft cat-attracting voice. Cardinal Richelieu gave his white cat seven names, after seven different Popes, but my motives might be misunderstood if I followed his example (not being a Cardinal). The ideal name eludes me, but I shall find it at last.
Friday: To the bank today, and stood in a queue right behind a man who appeared to be paying off the National Debt in pennies; he and the clerk counted them all several times with intense concentration, and after a while I began to count them too, to combat my boredom. . . When at last the Golden Boy moved away, and I confronted the wicket, I was intimidated to find that the young lady behind it was several inches taller than I was, and looked down at me as though she thought I had not come honestly by the few dirty bills which I poked at her through the bars. By the time my trifling business was finished, I was cringing pitifully before this G.o.ddess. . . But when I went to another wicket to get my book, I saw the true state of affairs. She was really a little girl, about the size I am accustomed to dandle on my knee, and she was standing on a box! It is this sort of misrepresentation on the part of banks which drives simple people to socialism. In the socialist state everybody will have to keep his feet flat on the floor, his head in the clouds, his shoulder to the wheel, his back to the wall, his ear to the ground, and his nose to the grindstone. And short girls will be made to stand under tables at the banquets of state officials, and retrieve the dropped napkins of the gorging Parteigenossen.
Sat.u.r.day: Kitten arrived today -- a tortoisesh.e.l.l inclining toward tiger stripes; its milk-name was "Tiger," and it may stick unless I can think of something better. It is a female, so Nicholas and Solomon must be abandoned. Cats marked in this way reveal Chinese ancestry, so I am told, but so far Tiger has shown none of the much-advertised Chinese calm. She has climbed the curtains, skated on the lid of the piano and displayed an utterly anti-Confucian pa.s.sion for fish sc.r.a.ps, bits of chicken, custard, junket, bread-and-milk and similar flesh-pots. A stickler for tradition, I wanted to b.u.t.ter her paws to accustom her to her new home, but the b.u.t.ter price will not permit it. Engaged in a lively discussion as to whether olive-oil was a permissible subst.i.tute. Made a punching-bag for Tiger out of a ball of paper and some string, and watched her box; kittens and babies are always able to reduce us to the last extreme of drooling fatuity; at last Tiger was settled for the night in a box containing an old sweater and a hot.w.a.ter bottle, the latter being a subst.i.tute for her mother. I hope she doesn"t get a shock in the morning, when she finds her mother has turned cold, bald and a disagreeable shade of red.
- XIX -.
Sunday: Went cheerfully through the whole day without realizing that the usual haphazard tinkering with the clocks was in progress, and that I should have been enjoying the benefits of Daylight Saving Time. I don"t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the boney, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.
Monday: An extremely attractive young woman of my acquaintance told me of an amatory adventure she had today. While at the grocer"s she noticed that she was an object of deep interest to a dark, pa.s.sionate young man behind the counter. Wherever she went he followed her with a burning eye: his heavy breathing was audible at a considerable distance; when at last he caught her eye, he gave her a glance charged with 25,000 volts of tender meaning. As she is quite accustomed to these tributes she paid no attention and forgot about him entirely until her groceries were delivered. But then she found his name, address and telephone number, neatly written in black crayon on one of her bananas! The use of a banana as a billet doux would have interested the late Havelock Ellis. I suggested that the next time she should casually drop a lemon, as a sign that his suit is hopeless.
Tuesday: As I sat outside the main dining room of the Royal York this evening, a large black dog appeared from nowhere and began to lick my hand, sit on my feet, wipe its nose on my trousers, and give other evidence of its esteem and regard. At the best of times I have a low opinion of Man"s Dumb Chum, and as I could see a headwaiter eyeing me balefully, as though about to call the hotel detective and the bouncer, I gave the creature a couple of sharp kicks in the slats and urged it to go elsewhere. But dogs love me just as inveterately as I hate them, and the creature took my abuse the way TV heroines take the soft cooings of Charles Boyer. This rattled me so much that I got up and moved to another chair, but the dog followed me, leaping up and down and wagging a tail like a wagon-tongue. Drastic action was called for, and so, with a Judas smile, I fed it a particularly ferocious coughdrop which I had in my pocket -- a coughdrop of atomic strength -- and that did the trick. It gave me a look of reproach which would have done credit to Beautiful Joe, and rushed away howling. When I last saw it, it was trying to get a drink out of an ornamental spittoon which was, however, filled with sand.
Wednesday: Went to see an entertainment describing itself as Russian Ballet tonight. But it had sacrificed all the grace and carefully concealed art of Russian Ballet for a kind of athletic joyousness which was about as amusing as a high school gym exhibition. In the art of ballet, inspiration is most decidedly not ninety-five per cent perspiration.
Thursday: If the purchase of costly, foolish little gadgets will do it, I should have a magnificent garden this year. Today I bought a hose-reel, a charming toy with a lot of green paint on it, for rolling up my hose and trundling it around the garden. The fact of the matter is that since the purchase of my wheelbarrow, I have lost all sense of values, and am ready to buy anything which looks like a garden tool. Although the wowsers pretend that men come to ruin through drink and women, the real truth of the matter is that more men are ruined by the purchase of expensive domestic junk than in any other way. Drink imposes its own limit, and women soon become a weariness of the flesh, but the pa.s.sion for saucy little garden gadgets, bedizened with green paint and ballbearings, is never stilled. It gnaweth like a serpent and wasteth like a fever.
Friday: In the morning paper, I see some pictures of flower arrangements done by Toronto interior decorators. In one of them some Arum lilies had been painted blue! Such tricks are not in the great j.a.panese tradition of flower arrangement. Indeed, when I studied the arrangement of flowers with the Hon. Miss Morning Mouth at the Imperial Greenhouses at Tokio, we were forbidden even to bend the stem of a flower or strengthen it with wire. I recall that one student (a pretty little creature called the Hon. Miss Bursting Coc.o.o.n) was caught by the Hon. Miss M. M. pressing the stem of a calceolaria with a hot iron, to make it straight, and she was in danger of expulsion. However, she made amends by writing one of those moving j.a.panese poems. It went like this: I pressed a stem; Ahem!
Now, when the moonlight falls on the jade roof of the Imperial Brewery, I am desolate.
Sat.u.r.day: Had an inaugural use of my hose-reel today. It was not a success, being designed for hose of the type which some people attach (for reasons unknown to me) to their hot-water bottles. My hose was too strong for it, and the pretty little barrel kept unwinding just at the moment when I most wanted it to remain firm. The green paint came off on my hands in gobs, and the little hook which was supposed to keep the whole thing in a beautiful, shipshape roll, came off at once, and had to be replaced with a piece of string. What is more, when the machine is loaded with hose, the little wheels won"t revolve. Some day, perhaps, I may learn to resist the soft appeal of garden appurtenances which belong strictly in the category of toys.
- XX -.
Sunday: Dirty weather today, culminating in hail later this afternoon. When I read about other people"s hail-storms in the papers, the hailstones are always described as being as big as pigeon"s eggs, and sometimes as big as baseb.a.l.l.s; my hailstones were no bigger than grains of tapioca, and melted as soon as they reached the ground. It was a disappointing performance. Frankly, I think that there is a tendency deep in the human soul to exaggerate the size of hailstones. To combat the cold I relit my furnace, using some odds and ends of coal, c.o.ke, dust and semi-liquid black goo from the corners of my cellar. The fire gave off a strangling black smoke, but no heat whatever, and deposited something like coal tar on all my furniture, upholsteries, and even on my person. I was noticeably swarthy when I went to bed.
Monday: On the Late Movie tonight saw The Sign Of The Cross, with Charles Laughton having his feet tickled, Elissa Landi being eaten by lions, and Claudette Colbert bouncing up and down prettily in a bath of a.s.ses" milk. It was one of those films in which Christianity and Romantic Love were inextricably confused; Christianity and Pure Love were equated with marrying the girl and restraining premarital caresses to an occasional light kiss on the lips; Paganism and Impure Love meant not marrying the girl, and occasionally joining her in her a.s.ses" milk bathtub. But the most fascinatingly repulsive confusion of Christianity and Hollywood Mush that I have ever seen was in the early Ben Hur in which lovers were shown in the foreground of the scene of the Crucifixion, with the caption, "He died, but Love goes on forever."
Tuesday: Heard about the engagement of two people known to me. Immediately the old question sprang into my mind: "What can they see in each other?" Pondered on this and decided that it was a stupid question. After all, I suppose everybody is lovable to some degree, if you approach them in the right way. Very often when I am introduced to women, I think, "What is she really like behind the disguise which she wears?" And very often I discover that she is pleasant enough, and probably would expand and glow if she received enough affection. . . This habit of mind is not unlike that of the wicked villains of French novels, who were frequently described as "stripping women with their eyes"; when I was younger I used to do that, but as my eyesight grew worse I had to depend more and more on guesswork, and finally gave it up altogether. Nowadays I never even take off a woman"s overcoat with my eyes. I am far more interested in the detection of wigs and false teeth than in conjectural revelations of a beauty which rarely exists.
Wednesday: My kitten Tiger is making the acquaintance of the whole world out-of-doors, and her amazement at such things as gra.s.s, plants and flower beds is pretty to watch; give her a border full of iris, and she thinks that she is in a jungle, and prowls realistically. Perhaps G.o.d made cats so that man might have the pleasure of fondling the tiger. . .The kitten has a luxurious, Bohemian, unpuritanical nature. It eats six meals a day, plays furiously with a toy mouse and a piece of rope, and suddenly falls into a deep sleep whenever the fit takes it. It never feels the necessity to do anything to justify its existence; it does not want to be a Good Citizen; it has never heard of Service. It knows that it is beautiful and delightful, and it considers that a sufficient contribution to the general good. And in return for its beauty and charm it expects fish, meat, and vegetables, a comfortable bed, a chair by the grate fire, and endless petting. The people who yelp so persistently for social security should take a lesson from kittens; they have only to be beautiful and charming, and they will get it without asking.
Thursday: Was not pleased this morning to receive a circular from an insurance company, addressed "To The Householder Or Roomer." It is not the implication that I take roomers which annoys me; I have nothing against boarding houses or boarders and have indeed filled the role of Roger the Lodger myself in many homes. No; it is the word "Roomer" itself which I dislike. The English language contains excellent and honourable words to meet all cases; a man who eats and sleeps in a house kept by somebody else is a boarder (unless he is an in-law, of course); a man who merely lives there and eats elsewhere is a lodger. If we accept the nasty word "roomer" into the language, we must accept its beastly counterpart "mealer." "Do you room at Mrs. Murphy"s?" "No, but I meal there.". . . What is more, I hate letters addressed to "The Householder Or Roomer," because they try to cover altogether too much ground with a miserable circular and a one-cent stamp. Furthermore, I loathe and condemn all circulars printed in type which tries to look like the print of a typewriter; I regard them as even baser than letters signed with a rubber-stamp of a signature. I have never bought a cent"s worth of insurance from any company dealing in such nasty deceits, and I never will.
Friday: Long letter today from a friend who loves cats, who calls me an "ailurophile," which I realize, after a little thought, is Greek for cat-lover. "Glad you have a cat," he says; "I don"t know how you managed so long without one. Every writer needs a cat. But you are wrong in saying that the names of the cats of great men are not on record. The earliest known cat was Bouhaki, who belonged to King Hana of the 11th Egyptian dynasty; and you must have heard of Mahomet"s cat Abuhareira. What about Mark Twain"s four cats, Apollinaris, Blatharskite, Sourmash and Zoroaster? What about Victor Hugo"s two -- Chanoine and Mouche? What about Carlyle"s cat Columbine? What about Rossetti"s cat Zoe? What about Matthew Arnold"s cats Blacky and Atossa, and Horace Walpole"s two cats Fatima and Selima, and Theophile Gautier"s two, Seraphita and Zizi, and Swinburne"s Atossa, and d.i.c.kens"s cat Williamina (first called William, by mistake) to name only a few? Dr. Johnson owned not only Hodge, whom you mention, but also a kitten called Lilly. I am surprised that you could write without a cat; no other writer of the least consequence has been without one."
Sat.u.r.day: Have been thinking about what my correspondent said yesterday; maybe the trouble with modern literature is that too many writers have deserted cats and gone over to dogs; a dog is a physical, not an intellectual companion. Perhaps, after all, the Indians had a good idea in their system of totems; certainly some people seem to be Dog-men, whereas others are died-in-the-wool Cat-men; I have known quite a few Bird-women, and once I met a Monkey-woman, who was never happy unless accompanied by a small monkey which appeared to have had its trousers patched on the seat with bright green. It"s a strange world, and we are all more in the grip of primitive ideas than we care to acknowledge. The other day I saw a little girl trying to walk on a hardwood floor without touching the cracks. "The cracks are poison," she explained, "and if you walk on them you"ll die." Children invent magic; later in life we are still subject to this sway, but we invent "scientific" theories, and "philosophies" to make it intellectually respectable.
- XXI -.
Sunday: The first picnic of the season, somewhat complicated by the difficulty of finding a piece of ground dry enough to sit on without receiving the impression that one had put one"s hind-quarters in cold storage. At last found a charming dingle (or gully, if you insist) and spread the refreshments; after all, a picnic is essentially a meal in the open air and there is no point in disguising the fact with attempts to appreciate the over-rated beauties of nature. There are two kinds of picnic which I hope to enjoy before I die; the first is the kind exalted in so many French paintings, in which the men lie on the gra.s.s and play mandolins and drink wine, while the ladies remove their clothes and paddle in a nearby river (see Le Dejeuner Sur L"Herbe by Manet); the second is an English Victorian picnic, with plenty of fine silver, a wine-cooler, a footman and a maid to serve the grub, and everybody dressed to the nines in sporting costume. The modern picnic, with peanut b.u.t.ter sandwiches and coffee, is good in its way, but lacks breadth and richness.
Monday: One of the candidates for the Prime Ministership is advertising that he was born in a log cabin, and apparently has a movie of the event to prove it. Why do so many people think it admirable to be born in a log cabin? To be born in a log cabin, during the past 60 or 70 years, merely indicates that one"s parents were shiftless; all the best people, whose parents were up-to-date in their views, were born in hospitals. A log cabin, with a dirt floor, wind whistling through the c.h.i.n.ks in the walls, rain falling, snow drifting, and wolves howling outside the door, is no place to usher a child into the world; it is likely to pick up all kinds of nasty ailments right away. To the truly progressive mind, being born in a log cabin is a shameful circ.u.mstance, to be concealed from political opponents, who may insist that a child so born is likely to break out, even in middle age, with croup, or thrush, or diaper rash, or some other humiliating and unstatesmanlike disease, right in the middle of a peace conference.
Tuesday: Without either effort or invitation on my part, politics has begun to colour my whole life. In Canada this is inevitable; what horse-racing is to Irishmen, or singing-contests to Welshmen, politics is to the Canadian. It is his absorbing pa.s.sion, bred in the bone and coursing through his blood. It weighs upon him like atmospheric pressure, 16 pounds to the square inch. There are Canadians who take no interest in politics, but they are chiefly drawn from the cla.s.s which converses in sign-language, eats with its hands, and cannot count above ten. The true Canadian can be brought back from the grave, lured from his treasure-chest or beguiled from his mistress" bower by two things -- an argument about religion or an argument about politics. I have seen elderly ladies who looked like waxwork advertis.e.m.e.nts for Mother"s Day become raging tigresses when politics has been mentioned, and babes scarcely weaned bash babes of uncongenial opinion with their dollies, as election day draws near. Indeed, as a babe I swung a mean Teddy Bear myself in defence of my party prejudices.
Wednesday: Because I have let my furnace out I have to make grate fires every night, to dry out my armchair; otherwise its boggy embrace threatens me with sciatica and swimmer"s cramp. Making a grate fire means splitting kindling and lugging wood, and by the time I have finished these jobs I am too hot to want a fire. There is a saying, attributed to Lincoln, that "he who splits his own wood, warms himself twice." Frankly I don"t believe that Lincoln said any such thing; he split lots of wood himself, and knew what a bore it is. But when great men die, preachers and schoolteachers, and others who are in constant need of support in their battle against human nature, invent sayings of this kind and attribute them to the dead, who are unable to talk back. Probably when I am gone I shall be represented to posterity as a man who always ate all his spinach, advocated hard physical exercise, and never left undone what he could do today. These will be gross untruths, of course, and no child who bases his life upon them will ever be anything like me; it is thus that mentors of the young hornswoggle their little pupils and prevent them from becoming wise and great.
Thursday: A holiday, which I observed by getting back to the land. That is to say, I cut my lawn for the first time this year. The pleasure-grounds at Marchbanks Towers present an interesting example of optical illusion applied to landscape gardening; they do not look particularly extensive, but when you begin to pace out their dimensions, behind a decrepit lawnmower, then they take on the proportions of Versailles.
Friday: When I was in Toronto last week I was suddenly confronted by a girl selling tags for the support of the Humane Society. I am a humane man, but humanity has limits; I am humane exactly twenty-five cents" worth. But I had no silver, and like a craven I gave the girl a dollar and dared not ask for change. Since then my extravagant humanity has gnawed at me. But last night I dreamed that it was happening again; I gave the girl a dollar, and in return she handed me, not a tag, but a printed card, which read: "The whole Brute Creation hereby promises and guarantees that in future it will not leap upon you and shed its hair on your trousers; it will not lick your hands or face; it will not bury bones in your flower beds, nor use your lawns either as a privy or as an arena for noisy amour; it will not howl or miaow between 10:30 p.m. and 8 a.m., it unconditionally swears not to upset your garbage cans. Yours for brotherly love, The Animals" Humane Society." I was happy to receive this pledge, and when I awoke and found that it was all a dream, I was downcast.
Sat.u.r.day: Painted some verandah furniture this afternoon, so that when summer comes I shall be ready to enjoy all four hours of it. Decided on a rather delicate and refined design -- red and green on a white background -- and paid twenty cents for a special brush to accomplish this work; I have never been one to skimp money on materials; a workman is as good as his tools, I have always maintained, and if I have to blow twenty cents on a paintbrush, I do it without a murmur. . . Completed my work, and, as I was admiring the effect, it began to rain; this means that my paint will probably not dry for several days, and will be tacky for years. Unwary visitors, sitting on my verandah furniture, will carry away impressions of my red and green arabesques which I never intended. . . I already have a green screen door, painted at enormous expense by a professional housepainter, which leaves every visitor with a green thumb. I can make a mess of my own house, without paying a professional painter to do so.
- XXII -.
Sunday: Read an article in a Montreal paper about the proper way to be a New Canadian. This was a tidbit; "Kidding is hard to get used to, but you have to learn; it may consist of mimicking, to see if you can take it. . . Later you may learn to kid back. . ." I pondered this, and my advice to New Canadians is not to kid back; Old Canadians don"t like to be kidded or mimicked, though they are extremely fond of kidding and mimicking others. Stains on many a drawing-room carpet are all that remain of those who imitated the Ontario accent, or spoke slightingly of our folk-festivals, such as Mother"s Day. Kidding or mimicking is best done in your native land, with plenty of your compatriots around to see that the unfortunate foreigner takes it in the proper sporting spirit.
Monday: To a political rally tonight, a form of entertainment in which, like all Canadians, I take endless delight. Every country has its distinctive art form; in Spain the bullfight; in France the treading of the grapes; in Italy the battle of the flowers; in England the cricket-match; in Scotland tossing the telegraph pole and squeezing the bawbee; in Wales the Eisteddfod; and in Canada the political rally. The sight of six or seven serious-minded men in unpressed pants sitting on a platform on kitchen chairs throws us into an ecstasy; if their mild remarks are translated into hoa.r.s.e roars by a public-address system, our joy knows no bounds; if the microphone is so cunningly adjusted that the stumpy have to strain to reach it and the lanky crouch to get near it, we are transported with delight. If we ourselves are sitting on chairs which squeal and complain when we move, we are happy; if a heckler is thrown out, we cheer; if the jamboree ends with the National Anthem three tones too high for our voices, we squeak like patriotic mice. O huzza for the political rally! Wow! Bam!! Powie!!
Tuesday: Seriously disappointed in my kitten Tiger today. During the evening a mouse climbed up through a cold air grating near my chair and surveyed the room with satisfaction. Aha, I thought, and fetched Tiger, who was sleeping elsewhere. I put her down by the grating, but she immediately climbed up on a sofa and went back to sleep. The mouse appeared again, but I made such a noise waking Tiger up that I frightened it away. But Tiger was now disposed to play, so I exercised her with her personal punch-bag for twenty minutes or so. Then the mouse came back. Antic.i.p.ating a splendid display of jungle ferocity and agility I pointed it out to Tiger, who sat down and looked at it philosophically. Sensing the situation the mouse began to make free of the room and ran about happily, while Tiger watched, and I tore out my hair in double-handfuls. At last, however, this unnatural cat decided to chase the mouse, and b.u.mped her nose on a door just as the mouse dashed under it. . . I wonder if Tiger"s glands work properly?
Wednesday: Was talking today with a man who collects antiques, and he showed me some of his treasures. Among them was a beer mug made of pottery which had a life-like pottery frog attached to the bottom of it. The purpose of this pretty thing was to scare the liver and lights out of the drinker as he finished his pint. I think poorly of this sort of humour, smacking as it does of itching-powder, fake bedbugs, rude noisemakers, dribble gla.s.ses, and the detestable like. The frog-mug was reputed to be about 150 years old, and I was surprised to find that such a comparatively mild joke was appreciated in the eighteenth century. My delving in history had led me to believe that no joke was admired in those days which did not result at least in a broken leg or the loss of an eye. Merely making a man"s stomach heave with a fake frog must have seemed very poor sport to our rude forefathers, and was probably left to the ladies.
Thursday: To another political rally tonight; my thirst for politics is not to be slaked by mere epicene listening to the radio. And speaking of radio, the radio boys nearly broke up this rally by tapping the microphones, pulling wires, climbing over the speakers, and hooting into the amplifiers during the first twenty minutes of its progress. This made clear to me what I have long suspected, which is that the average radio man doesn"t know what makes radio work, and when it won"t work he is the embarra.s.sed victim of his own gadget -- Man at the mercy of the Machine. While all this was going on, some poor fellow was trying to make a speech, but n.o.body paid any attention to him; they were hoping one of the radio boys would be electrocuted before their very eyes, and expire in agony with forked lightning coming out of his boot-heels. But the Leader arrived in the nick of time, and the radio decided to settle down and enjoy the fun. . . The Leader performed the amazing feat of speaking for 75 minutes without once taking a drink from the two gla.s.ses and the full jug on the table before him; I have seen lesser men consume a hogshead of water in the course of a fifteen minute speech. But a real statesman has something of the endurance of a camel; he fills up with raspberry vinegar in the morning, and speaks all day without further need for refreshment.
Friday: Read a criticism of Canadians which says that we are great brooders, and attributes this in part to the fact that our winter lasts for seven months. This is nonsense; our winter lasts for nine months, in a lucky year. Of course, we let our fires out, and peck at the frosty ground in our gardens, and huddle into any patch of white, watery sunshine which breaks through the clouds during April and May, but we pay for our haste in colds and lumbago. In June, July and August, Canadians may do without a fire, but September and May are not to be trusted. Is it any wonder then that we brood? Is it surprising that our incidence of insanity is so great that it is a shame and a scandal to our country? I am just an ordinary brooder myself; I make no claim to being a Big League brooder; but I brood about my furnace several hours each day, even when it is out for the brief summer season. And I do well to brood, let me tell you!
Sat.u.r.day: Much mail for me today, from fellows anxious that I should vote for them on Monday; the newspapers, too, say that they do not care how I vote, so long as I vote. This constant harping on the subject reminds me that the word "vote" actually means "prayer," and this in turn recalls the remark of a very wise man that when the G.o.ds wish to punish us they answer our prayers. . . I am glad that we do not have automatic voting machines here, as they do in the U.S.A. Like all machines, they exist primarily to go wrong, and when the late F. D. Roosevelt cast his last vote for himself the machine stuck and he swore at it, and then had to waste much valuable time apologizing for his ribaldry to women"s lodges, preachers" unions and similar groups. . . I have been listening to the radio hysterics of all three parties for a full week, and now I feel that the fate of the nation lies in my hands.
- XXIII -.
Sunday: Admitted defeat today, and re-lit my furnace. A stickler for tradition, I let it out on the fifteenth of May, arguing that if spring had not come it could not be far away. But Nature, always ready with a nasty surprise for those who take her for granted, a.s.serted herself and an Ice Age set in at Marchbanks Towers; nothing would dry that was wet; nothing that was dry would stay dry; outside it was cold, wet and raw; inside it was cold, wet and stuffy. There was nothing else for it; I went downstairs and faced the Monster. As I shoved kindling into his maw it seemed to me that he leered. . . The life of Man is a struggle with Nature and a struggle with the Machine; when Nature and the Machine link forces against him, Man hasn"t a chance.
Monday and Election Day: An election today, and everyone I met had a slightly woozy look, as though he had been sniffing ether on the sly. The streets were filled with cars, lugging voters to the polls; sometimes I wonder if that haulage business really pays; what guarantee does the free pa.s.senger give that he will vote for the man who provides him with a car? A really astute politician would send cars to pick up his known opponents, and would then carry them off, twenty-five miles or so into the country, and jettison them. Few of them would be able to walk home before the polls closed. . . After the results were announced I was interested to see the wonderful unanimity of feeling which prevailed: the winning side was disposed to be generous, and told the losers that they wished they had done better; the losers, on the contrary, a.s.sured the winners that they had foreseen what would happen, and were in no way cast down by it; the socialists, who had been telling the world that they would win, proceeded forthwith to explain that they never dreamed of winning, and expressed delight that they had received any votes at all. Every one was so anxious to show complete satisfaction and good fellowship that a stranger, dropped by parachute, would have a.s.sumed that they were all on the winning side. . . The losers" hangover will begin tomorrow, when the ether wears off.
Tuesday: To a circus tonight. A circus is the only entertainment which can follow an election without appearing to be anticlimax. The a.n.a.logy between a circus and an election, indeed, could hardly be more complete: the tightrope walkers, the acrobats, the contortionists, the trained seals, the mangy old lions with no teeth and the clowns, the clowns, the clowns!!!
Wednesday: The coming of sunshine and warm weather has aggravated a tendency which I have observed for some time; I mean the custom of girls walking about the streets hand-in-hand. If I see a young man and a girl walking hand-in-hand I regard them as a little soft, but not beyond reclaim; but when I see girls walking thus, gazing into each others" eyes, and laughing with laughter which is like the shattering of electric light bulbs in a tin biscuit-box, I wonder what"s afoot. This afternoon I saw a girl got up like Huckleberry Finn (blue trousers rolled up, an open shirt, and a rag round her head) squiring a smaller girl in a skirt across a street, and they were so lost in Love"s Young Ersatz Dream that they were almost run over by a car. . . In my experience, limited and monastic though it has been, women do not greatly like other women; they prefer men as conversationalists, walking partners, and hand-holders; they refer to gatherings of their own s.e.x as "hen-parties," and regard them as dull. . . I have always considered hero-worship in schoolboys, and heroine-worship in schoolgirls, as the most humiliating of adolescent diseases, worse even than pimples and damp hands.
Thursday: The circus flavour lasts. Everywhere I go these days I see little girls trying to make their dogs skip, little girls trying to balance themselves on rolling barrels, little boys trying to walk along fence-tops and little boys trying to evolve a "cod fight," like clowns. The technique of the "cod fight" is simple; while the fighters seem to be hitting each other the most resounding blows, they are slapping their free hands together at about waist level; when they do this with enormous loose gloves, the effect is superb; but when two small boys try to do it with their bare hands, they usually hurt themselves, and discover that being a clown is a somewhat more specialized profession than they thought. This is an important discovery in anyone"s life.
Friday: The humidity today was intense, and I was talking to a man who told me (not without a note of pride in his voice) that he had taken four baths since morning. It occurred to me to warn him that he would wash away all his natural oils and develop a nasty, mealy skin, but I refrained; if you warn people against too much bathing they tend to jump to the conclusion that you never bathe yourself, and begin sniffing at you unpleasantly whenever the mercury rises. . . As a confirmed movie-goer, I am in a position to a.s.sure the public that the average Canadian does not bathe too much, and that his or her natural oils are in a splendid state of conservation.
Sat.u.r.day: Was talking to a man today who advanced the theory that the violence of the recent election was attributable to the bad weather; wet, cold politicians, he said, were markedly more vicious than warm, sundrenched ones. Politicians, he continued, are like grapes; when they are allowed to ripen long upon the vine, they achieve a sweet, rich flavour, and give off a delightful aroma of wisdom and urbanity; but when they get too much rain and frost they are small, sour, thick-skinned and inclined to seediness. . . Parliament he said (by now intoxicated with the insidious liquor of metaphor) was a wine, composed of all these diverse political grapes, and sometimes we got fine old fruity Parliaments, full flavoured and of exquisite bouquet, and sometimes we got little, sour Parliaments, provocative of bellyache; it all depended on the grapes. . . Fascinated by his eloquence, I suggested that we should throw a few newly-elected members into a vat, and trample them with our bare feet, singing merry vintage songs the while, in order to see how the new brew would turn out; O for a beaker full of the Twenty-sixth Parliament, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene!
- XXIV -.
Sunday: Had some notion of a picnic today, but it rained. A man I know who lives in the woods tells me that the mosquitoes this year will be as big as sparrows, and may be expected to last until well into December. He bases this prediction on the way the beavers are building their dams. As everyone knows, beavers eat a lot of insects, and particularly mosquitoes (for the formic acid which the latter contain, and which a.s.sists the beaver in seeing under water) and a beaver"s burrow contains a special chamber for the storage of the insects caught during the summer season. Apparently the beavers this year are making these chambers unusually big, and from this my friend deduces that they expect a b.u.mper crop of mosquitoes, of particularly large size. . . I have always wished that I were better versed in nature lore of this kind.
Monday: To a picnic this afternoon on the sh.o.r.es of a lake which contained many islands; because of the soft dampness of the air and some tricks of light, the scene was strongly reminiscent of the Hebrides. Saw a garter snake, the first in a long time, and observed its beautiful squirmings and darlings from a prudent distance. I am told by my naturalist friends that these creatures are about a foot long and completely harmless, but in the matter of snakes I suffer from telescopic vision; if I stand too near a garter snake it a.s.sumes the proportions of a boa constrictor. . . Fear of snakes seems unrelated to other kinds of physical courage. I have seen large, tough men jump and squeak like school-girls at the sight of a gra.s.s snake, and I have known two girls who thoroughly enjoyed a romp with any snake they met. Personally I have developed a suave but distant politeness toward reptiles of all sorts, and I prefer to see them in zoos, if at all.
Tuesday: Noticed a mixed group of dogs playing today, and wondered whether they had any consciousness of breed, as we have of race; I can see no sign of it. The lordly Afghan seems willing to play tag with a terrier, and a spaniel plays with a St. Bernard without any apparent consciousness of the difference in size between them. There seems to be no Apartheid, no Jewish Problem, no Quebec and Ontario feeling among dogs. . . Tonight to the movies -- one of those dreary pieces about a musical genius who has fits and kills people. Why is it that genius on the screen is so frequently represented as a form of idiocy? Is it to comfort the mediocrities who have paid the price of admission to sit and think, "O how lucky we are not to be geniuses; how fortunate we are to be happily dumb and imperturbably numb!"
Wednesday: The continuing Canadian Flag controversy concerns no cla.s.s of society more deeply than elocutionists, as one of them was explaining to me today. For years they have made a specialty of a rousing poem by the late E. Pauline Johnson ("Tonakela") called Canadian Born, every verse of which ends with some such a.s.sertion as: But each has one credential Which ent.i.tles him to brag That he was born in Canada, Beneath the British Flag!
Canadian Born is what elocutionists call, in the parlance of their trade, "a ring-tailed peeler," containing such n.o.ble and rampageous lines as: The Dutch may have their Holland, The Spaniard have his Spain; The Yankee to the south of us Must south of us remain!
-- these latter words being delivered in a loud, quarrel-picking voice. I have heard it recited often (sometimes even in Indian costume) at church socials, political picnics, Dominion Day Celebrations, and kindred uproars, and it never fails to rouse the audience to blood-thirsty fury -- sometimes directed toward the foes of their country, and sometimes toward the elocutionist herself (for it is generally a.s.sumed to be a piece for a lady to speak). Tonakela has gone to the Happy Hunting Ground, and the chances that any of our ice-bound modern Canadian poets will write another such patriotic bobby-dazzler are slight indeed.
Thursday: Hot all day, and hot tonight -- too hot to do any work, though I had plenty to do. So went to a movie instead. Its charm lay in the fact that it lacked "love interest" completely. I am not interested in anybody"s love affairs except my own, and I think that many people feel the same way. Who wants to sit through several reels of inanity which has no purpose except to postpone the inevitable kiss or bedding? Love, as a theme for the movies, has had its day; give me more movies about money and other such interesting things. I know exactly what the Beloved in the Song of Solomon meant when she cried "Comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love". . . Thunder storm in the night, which meant that I had to rise from my bed and flit about the house, like a wraith, shutting windows and falling over things people had left on the floor.
Friday: Since I got a cat of my own, my life has been full of cats. Visited a lady today who has two beautiful black and white cats named Inky and Pinky. I hear news occasionally of my brother Fairchild"s Persian, named b.u.t.ton Boots. I see cats on the streets and by the roadside, where I never saw a cat before. A few days ago, making my way toward the In and Out shop, I was almost knocked over by a black Persian, as big as a spaniel, dashing past me, pursued by a man carrying a wrapped bottle. Whether it was a jinni which had escaped from the liquor I did not have time to enquire. As for my own kitten, Tiger, I am learning things from her that I never knew before. First of all, I never knew that a kitten could burp, which Tiger does with all the abandon of an old mariner. Second, I never realized that a kitten could be completely and infallibly house-trained, and suddenly forget all it had been taught, reverting to intolerable Bohemianism. Also, why does she like to hide in the piano, plucking ghostly music from the strings with her claws? Is she a sphinx, or merely a humorist of a somewhat earthy sort?
Sat.u.r.day: Worked in my garden this afternoon, until rain drove me indoors. Fed the kitten and observed that she ate from the front of her plate toward the back, thereby keeping all her food under her chin, in case an enemy should try to s.n.a.t.c.h a morsel from her. I have noticed many human beings who eat in precisely the same way, and I deduce that it is a continuance of jungle behaviour. Next time I see a man who crouches over his plate and scoops all his food from the outside edge, I shall let out a howl like a pterodactyl, and watch him give a primordial, prehistoric jump.
- XXV -.
Sunday: As it was a fine day I sat on my verandah and permitted pa.s.sers-by to stare at me. Staring is the great Sunday-afternoon pastime. People who go walking on the seventh day seem convinced that anyone who sits on a verandah is blind, deaf and silly. They wander along the streets, gaping like egg-bound pullets, and making remarks in voices which carry perfectly for a quarter of a mile in all directions. "That house needs a good coat of paint," says one, and another replies "If that were my lawn, I"d rip the whole thing up and re-sod it." " Look at those vines," someone cries indignantly; "they just ruin the brickwork and harbour vermin." "You"d think those people would weed their beds once in a while, wouldn"t you?" counters his companion, while I sit upright and glare like a basilisk. But no pa.s.ser-by ever pays any attention to me; they think I am a cigar-store Indian, or a stuffed souvenir of a hunting trip, probably. Some day I shall shout back. "Why don"t you wipe that child"s nose?" I shall scream, or "Did you buy that hat at a fire-sale?"
Monday: I am told that the strawberry crop this year will be a failure. I cannot remember a year in which this rumour has not been circulated. Probably it is like the rumours which fly about during the early part of December that Santa Claus has committed suicide. . . However, I bought a few sour, green, imported berries, and ate them, just to make sure that I experienced some approximation of that most delicious of all flavours this year.
Tuesday: To a movie tonight. It was a farce, and as often happens in the farce, the actors thought that everything they said was much funnier if they shouted it at the tops of their voices. The ladies also wore those peculiar lace negligees which are never seen anywhere but on actresses in farces. Women wear all sorts of garments when they want to be comfortable -- magnificently cut housecoats, kimonos, flannel dressing gowns, and even old bathrobes which their husbands have discarded as unfit for further service -- but they never wear those tight-fitting things with lace skirts split up the front, for the good reason that it is impossible to sit down in one, much less perform any of the feats appropriate to negligees. . . I like movie magazines, but I have never dared to subscribe to one. I had a friend once who did so, and it was apparent that the magazine lent its subscription list rather carelessly to its advertisers, for he immediately began to receive free samples of lipstick, and offers from people who wanted to develop his bust a new scientific way -- money back after 30 days if not satisfied. His landlady began to treat him with marked hauteur and he had to move.
Wednesday: A letter from a furniture company reached me this morning which began, "Does your office proclaim you a man of action?" Well, to be frank, it does not. It proclaims me to be a man of sloth. It is the tradition of the modern tyc.o.o.n, I know, to have his desk utterly clear at all times; if he has any letters or papers which are necessary to his work, he piles them on his secretary"s desk or hides them under the carpet. But my desk is a welter of trash, some of it necessary but most of it garbage of a high-cla.s.s, literary kind. I am a great cherisher of the stubs of pencils, and I cannot bear to throw away a ruptured fountain pen; indeed, I keep one solely for the purpose of stirring my paste-pot, which solidifies in cold weather. I have also a ruler with a jagged edge, which is quite unusable, but I keep it as a reminder of a dear friend, now in Abraham"s bosom, who used to own it before I stole it. I like to pile books and papers on the floor, because then I can see where they are, and I file newspaper clippings by keeping the whole paper of which they form a part. I am not a man of action, and I don"t care who knows it. I work best in a mess -- my own kind of friendly, logical mess. In my eyes the clean-desk boys are frauds.
Thursday: Was roused this morning by a loud cawing, and looked out of my window to see a large crow sitting on a branch with its mouth full of bread, making daybreak hideous with its cries. This recalled to me Aesop"s fable about the crow which was flattered into singing by a fox, and dropped its piece of cheese as a result. It was obvious that this crow could sing and hold on to a huge piece of food at the same time. So much for that old scoundrel Aesop, whom I have long suspected of being better as a puritan moralist than as an accurate observer of nature. Read Aesop"s Fables in the light of everyday adult experience, and what do we find? We find that the man who gives up the substance for the shadow is often richly rewarded, and admired by posterity for his vision. We find that the dog in the manger can always get a well-paid job as a union leader, and the more difficult he is to appease, the greater is his success. We find that the lion who a.s.sists a mouse usually has to listen to a lot of saucy talk from the mouse about Imperialism. It is my belief that Aesop was a simpleton who took good care never to look about him, for fear of finding that the world did not gibe with his theories.
Friday: I see by the papers that Scotland (or, more accurately, the Scottish Nationalist Party) is going to submit a brief to the United Nations on the unjust oppression of Scotland by England. Personally, I don"t think that England would ever give up Scotland without establishing a state of Pakistan for the protection of the Irishmen and Welshmen who contribute so much to the cultural and intellectual life of Glasgow, and the Englishmen and Jews who have won for the universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh the reputation for brilliance which they now enjoy. My own ancestors descended upon England from Scotland a century or more ago, pausing at the border only long enough to change their name from Marjoribanks to its present form. I don"t imagine that their descendants would want to be herded back to the bleak hillsides from which they escaped after the Great Capercailzie Famine of 1745. Nowadays you won"t find a Marchbanks in Scotland even during the grouse season; most of us just do our grousing wherever we happen to be. "A tussock wowsie"s nae doit.i.t," as Robbie Burns said, putting the whole thing in a nutsh.e.l.l.
Sat.u.r.day: While I was cutting gra.s.s and weeding this afternoon I was greatly troubled by mosquitoes, flies and other nuisances, and in this way my attention was drawn toward the benevolent insects -- bees, gra.s.shoppers and the like. I recall reading in a book about insects that they evolve their own economic laws, and abide by them. Thus ants go in for full employment, while bees consider it worth while to support a monarchy and an aristocracy; gra.s.shoppers are definite laissez-faire liberals, and dung-beetles are bourgeois capitalists. But what about accidents, I pondered? Ants are socialists, possessing a complete, nasty, compact little socialist state of their own; but what happens to their economic laws when I run my lawnmower over their anthill? They didn"t foresee that. And the bees get an unexpected handout from me when I put out honey boxes for them to clean; that boosts their economy unfairly. I am convinced that no insect sees me, except the mosquito, and yet in my garden I play Providence to the insect world without giving the matter a moment"s thought. I am the Unknown Factor, the Parcae in the lives of thousands of creatures with whom I am not even on nodding terms. A sweetly solemn thought.
- XXVI -.
Sunday: Put out my hanging baskets yesterday, and woke this morning to find that the temperature had dropped to 42. Just the sort of shabby trick that our Canadian summers are always playing. I well recall going for a picnic on the 24th of May in 1932, and returning home because it suddenly began to snow! It is this uncertainty of the weather which makes Canadians the morose, haunted, apprehensive people they are. The plays of Ibsen reflect the Canadian spirit admirably. For instance -- GERDA: Where are you going, Inspector?
INSPECTOR: Down to the waterfront to get a cod for supper. Don"t wait for me. I may commit suicide.
GERDA: G.o.d"s will be done. But in any case, wear your m.u.f.fler, your rubbers, your ear m.u.f.fs and your wraprascal. It may snow.
INSPECTOR: True, and if I decide against death I don"t want to catch a cold.
That is a s.n.a.t.c.h from Ibsen"s early drama The Pensions Co-Ordinator. It was never much of a success.
Monday: A magnificent day, and I pa.s.sed a considerable part of it wishing I did not have to work. The more complex our civilization becomes, the less fun there is in it and the more work there is to do. The ultimate in civilizations is that of the ants, who work ceaselessly, and have no fun at all. And what do they get out of it? Well -- did you ever look at an ant"s face under a microscope? It looks exactly like a photograph of Henry Ford. . . To the movies tonight and saw a very dull film which tried to make out that missionaries have a lot of fun. Well -- did you ever look at a missionary"s face under a microscope? That is the result of trying to persuade the heathen that it is wrong to get stinko on the fermented juice of the banyan, without using profanity, police or physical violence. The fact that many missionaries are married also makes it hard to interest the heathen in the Christian inst.i.tution of monogamy, which they confuse with monotony.
Tuesday: Upon the advice of my physician (a distinguished man who has a perfect understanding of my case) I take a little rest each day after lunch. But recently my repose has been shattered by a bird which imitates the sound of a telephone-bell perfectly. I compose myself for slumber, then br-r-r-ring goes this accursed bird, and up I jump and rush indoors to the phone, to find that there is nothing stirring at the other end of the wire. Naturalists deny the existence of any such bird, but it lives in a maple tree just by my verandah, and I have seen it; it is about the size of a jay, and has a black and green plumage. If I can catch it there will be telephone-bird pie on the menu at Chateau Marchbanks.
Wednesday: A very hot day, and owing to some lack of caution I had committed myself a week ago to do some heavy gardening today -- to clean out a wilderness, in fact. The wilderness was a mosquito headquarters, and they were holding an oec.u.menical conference, which I broke up with a great display of personal bravery. There were times however when I debated whether it would not be easier to lie down and die on the spot than to go on with the job. I was forcibly reminded of a poem which I read years ago in Second or Third Book about a negro slave who collapsed in the field with his sickle in his hand, and died while thinking of his days of glory in Africa, where "the lordly Niger flowed"; he was too far gone to feel the heat of the sun, or the cruel overseer"s whip, or the indignity of his present position. That was just the way I felt. "Better death than work!" I cried, throwing myself into the jaws of my lawnmower, but it spat me out contemptuously. It is too dull to cut gra.s.s, let alone serve as an instrument of suicide.
Thursday: Was chatting today with a man who has just had a baby; that is to say, his wife actually had the baby, but as anyone knows who has experienced it, the work of the superintendent in such processes is often as exhausting as that of the mother. He was weak and run down, and subject to dizzy spells, as the people who have just had babies always are in the advertis.e.m.e.nts, so I urged him to get himself a good nerve tonic, and did what I could to revive him with strawberries. . . As men will, when they get together, we discussed the curious fact that, whenever it becomes known that you are going to have a baby, everybody hastens to tell your their favourite Horrible Tale about the Baby With Two Heads, or the Baby that Vanished, or the Baby that Got Mixed Up In The Hospital, and never knew whether it was a boy or a girl. Everybody likes to scare the wits out of an expectant father. I am going to write a book some day, called Radiant Fatherhood, which will make the whole thing seem beautiful and natural, and an experience to be cherished for a lifetime (which is, indeed, as long as one can cherish anything).
Friday: The morning paper contains yet another repet.i.tion of the claim that the Bible is the best-selling book in the world, and that Pilgrim"s Progress comes next. I see this a.s.sertion in some form or other about once a month, but I have never seen any figures to prove it, and I suspect that it is merely something which a number of devout people would like to believe. Of course many Bibles are sold; I have seven Bibles myself, three of which I bought, and four of which I was given. But for Pilgrim"s Progress -- does anybody ever finish it? As a child my gorge rose at the lugubriousness of Pilgrim, and I had a wicked hankering for Vanity Fair; after I grew up I tried to read it again, and failed. Bunyan was a notable stylist, but his mind was the mind of a sanctimonious tinker.
Sat.u.r.day: I see that the Dominion Bureau of Agriculture is urging us to keep goats; the bureau writes about goats with tenderness and affection. Once it was my duty to look after a family of goats -- a nanny, a billy and a kid -- for a week during an outdoor production of As You Like It, and in that time I grew to like them, and even to trust them. They had some nasty ways, but were really much more intelligent and friendly than cows. It is a lie to say that they eat tin cans and underwear; they like glue, and esteem the label from a tin can as a great delicacy, but they do not eat the tin, and they simply turn their noses up at an old undershirt. Nor do they b.u.t.t you if you treat them kindly. My only complaint was that they stank -- not a dirty or unwholesome smell, but a powerful animal emanation -- and after I tended the goats I had to change my clothes before I was acceptable in fastidious circles. . . Goats have a lively sense of humour. They like to push and shove you to see if they can make you angry, and if you resent it, they jump up and down and laugh. But if you shove them back again, and hurl genial insults at them, they know that you are a good fellow, and accept you as a sort of honorary goat. I have had some high old times with goats.
SUMMER.
- XXVII -.